In a convoluted case involving a dysfunctional family, a brother sought a criminal charge of assault against my client/his brother-in-law. This was because the client responded by bringing a bat to his wife's urgent call for aid regarding said brother beating on the mother's door, which the wife refused to open.

Note that:

1. The complainant brother brought the complaint over a year after it happened;

2. Complainant brother misstated the date of the event by several months on the complaint;

3. Complainant stated to the police at the time, and the Clerk-Magistrate at the hearing, my  client never threatened him with the bat, or even advanced towards him with it;

4. Tried to revise his statements to police two days after the event,;

5. The police report expressly stated there was no assault.

6. The client's daughter was with her mother during the incident, and described the duration of the pounding and the threats the brother/her uncle made do her mother, and;

7. Brother tried to create a threat out of whole cloth by informing the CM my client owned guns.

Testimony from the daughter on that issue utterly disposed of the desperate attempt to make my client into an armed vigilante.

CONCLUSION: No complaint issued. Client and wife are quite pleased; the bullying brother was not.